Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
If there are several individual items, their total momentum is just the sum of the individual momenta:
Example: Joe (M = 60 kg) rides his skateboard (m = 4 kg) eastward at a speed of 1 m/s.
As he approaches the ice cream parlor, Joe notices a pretty young woman sitting on the porch. He decides to make an impressive entrance. At time t = 0 s, just as he and the skateboard are passing the porch, he hops backwards off the skateboard so that he lands motionless on the ground. The skateboard, on the other hand, shoots forward and continues eastward at a speed v.
Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.